During a metal cutting operation, any vibration between a cutting tool and a workpiece may lead to undesirable cutting performances, such as poor surface finish and out-of-tolerance finished workpieces. Furthermore, such vibration may cause the cutting tool, or the associated machine tool, to become damaged.
To reduce this vibration, cutting speed can be decreased. However, this approach reduces metal removal rates, thereby negatively impacting productivity.
Another approach is to internally mount an absorber mass within a cavity of the shank. In one design, a resilient support circumscribes each end of the absorber mass to suspend the absorber mass within the cavity. A pressure plate is positioned adjacent the resilient support and is movable along the longitudinal axis to compress each resilient support against the absorber mass. An adjustment screw is used to displace the movable pressure plate along the longitudinal axis to shift the position of the absorber mass to alter the stiffness of the resilient support to change the dynamic response of the toolholder.
Although positioning an absorber mass within the cavity of the shank suppresses vibrations, the requirement of mounting the absorber mass within the cavity of the shank undesirably reduces the overall stiffness of the toolholder. In addition, the size of the absorber mass is limited to the size of the cavity, and therefore the vibration absorber may not be used for larger toolholder designs that require a larger absorber mass.